Distrust Of Clinton By Independents Makes Her Vulnerable In General Election

July 30, 2015 — Ron Chusid

Things are not going well for Hillary Clinton when she is compared to Donald Trump, such as in this op-ed at ABC News by Matthew Dowd entitled, Canary in Coal Mine: Trouble Ahead for Poll Leaders Trump and Clinton. The view is that the candidate leading the polls for both parties looks like a loser. The difference is that Donald Trump is still considered by many to be unable to win the Republican nomination, and looks like he will lose badly if he does make it to the general election. Hillary Clinton remains in a strong position to win the Democratic nomination, but now looks to be in considerable danger of losing the general election (unless she is fortunate enough to be up against Donald Trump).

This is based upon the the latest Quinnipiac poll, the most recent in a recent string of poor polling results for Clinton. Some of the points in the poll stressed by Dowd:

1. As we have seen previously, the electorate is incredibly polarized, with Republicans and Democrats lining up nearly unanimously with their parties’ candidates for House, Senate and president. You only see 1% or 2% defection to the opposing party. As I have written recently, it is Independents who will decide next year’s election outcome, and as of today they are slightly leaning voting Republican up and down the ballot — except for Trump, who they are opposed to in the general election.

2. Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable rating today is a net negative 11 points, and among Independents it is a net negative 18 points. She started out the campaign in March with a positive net of 3 points so she has deteriorated badly in the course of four months. Trump today has a disastrous net negative favorable rating of minus 32 points overall and among Independents.

3. Hillary is viewed as not honest and trustworthy by an amazing 57% of the country and by 62% of Independents. The opinion of Trump is just as bad, being viewed by 58% as not trustworthy. This is a difficult platform for either to run a campaign from if they don’t fix it, and even more problematic in attempting to govern the country if they were to win.

4. And on the very important quality of “cares about needs and problems of average people” (which Democrats always seem to score well on), 52% say Hillary doesn’t. And 63% say Trump doesn’t care about needs and problems of regular voters. Again, this is a deep flaw that both retain going into this election cycle.

5. So why are they ahead in their respective primaries and what does this mean? Much is driven by name identification as well as the lack of a true dominant counter force in their primaries. But keep in mind voter support is a lagging indicator of this race, and the leading indicators to watch are likability, qualities of connection, and trustworthiness. They are the canaries in the coal mine signaling problems ahead. Hillary and Trump are very vulnerable to being beaten — Hillary more likely in the general election, Trump in the primary because of the different bases of support.

Hopefully if Democrats begin to understand how vulnerable Clinton is to being defeated in the general election in time this will lead to the selection of a better candidate.

Part of the reason that Clinton is distrusted is the evasive way in which she answers questions, with non-answers such as “If it’s undecided when I become president, I will answer your question.” The problem has been exacerbated by the email scandals. The latest addition to the long list of questions about Clinton’s conduct is whether she was sending classified information over her private server. McClatchy took a closer look at this story:

“Even if Secretary Clinton or her aides didn’t run afoul of any criminal provisions, the fact that classified information was identified within the emails is exactly why use of private emails . . . is not supposed to be allowed,” said Bradley Moss, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security matters. “Both she and her team made a serious management mistake that no one should ever repeat.”

McClatchy also has determined some details of the five emails that the intelligence community’s inspector general has described as classified and improperly handled.

Intelligence officials who reviewed the five classified emails determined that they included information from five separate intelligence agencies, said a congressional official with knowledge of the matter…

State Department officials routinely gather and report diplomatic information that “in an intelligence context could be read very differently,” said Fitzpatrick, the director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives.

Government employees with access to classified information are trained to identify classified information, Fitzpatrick said.

“The requirement to mark is so that you know it when you see it,” he said. “Failure to observe any of the requirements for marking or safeguarding would be in a category known as a security violation.”

Failing to properly mark information as classified would not necessarily result in criminal charges, he said.

The matter would be far more serious if it were to turn out that there were hundreds of classified emails.